Redecentralize, everything

We can no longer turn our nose to an industry

I sat quietly, removed from the rest. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t know if I had any ability to fit in; I don’t speak the same language. The language of a rhetorical academic (even that I’m sure is used incorrectly). And so, out of my element (by choice) I sat and listened to an amazing speaker discuss his journey from insider to… outsider. This is the issue of a cross-sectional as well as those who both need and can generate new technologies; living on the bridge between universes (but that’s a good thing).

I sat, listening to the keynote address the crowd as if they were family. He was one of them. He came from them, he had been where they had been and been in their community for some time. He had ascended the ivory tower, to which I’m sure some showed scorn (after all, pure research is why we get into this gig). He then related this fact (that they probably hate him for doing so) to friendly chuckles.

He then started to talk about how he built a product that some of them used and that while this was an idea that he had been working on within an institutional organization, that the structure itself would never allow it to overtake the corporate stronghold of a single player in the industry. He then said that they considered making what they were doing open source, but that it could never been open source and be successful because no open source solution has ever started in academia and been successful (a point that I reject but still).

Feeling the mood shift in the room when he talked about having to incorporate, he stopped and said what was pure gold for me (not exactly quoting):

I see how you responded when I said we had to build a company. It’s antithetical to how we academics want to operate. But I’m actually trying to do something. We can all complain about how much we hate _________ and turn our noses up and feel good about ourselves. We can skip using that product and encourage our peers to do so as well, but guess what; All your universities and college are still paying them. So they’ll still suck, and they’ll exist forever. So this is me taking a stand, because we need more options.

Some of this is that it was several months ago at Computers & Writing 2016 that I heard this talk ( I believe) so the quote is off; but much of the context remains. If no one stands up. If everyone simply scoffs at what has become the status quo and doesn’t provide a challenge to it; it will remain the status quo. And we’ll feel great, wow will we feel great. We hate “the man” and we rail against the system of control that our lesser colleagues just can’t see through. But we do nothing to provide them with a different solution.

In technology, much like in politics, you don’t catch flys with vinegar. You don’t win people to your system, your way of thinking or your way that you know leads them to freedom by being an ass and simply thumbing your nose at the establishment.

Don’t do what simply feels good. Do as Alinsky said

Do one of three things. One,go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves.Two,go psycho and start bombing-but this will only swing people to the right. Three,learn a lesson. Go home,organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.

Real change doesn’t come through violence, hate, anger, or self-loathing. Real change comes through building community, organizing, and doing whatever it takes to become the thing that the next generation will grow to hate: the establishment.

The only way to usurp the establishment is to become that which you hate. If you desire change more then you desire winning, you know what to do. Polish, refine, always accepting feedback, always improving, always accepting any minor victory and not focusing on the lost battles, always accepting the new, always accepting.

Quit writing about how badly edtech needs change or how bad players in the industry are. Quit talking about what a cash cow this market is (looking at you TechCrunch), all the while decrying that the educational industrial complex as too expensive and too often missing the mark. These wailing walls do us no good but sure feel nice to relate to.

Go home, organize, build power. I have for some time now… and while it takes me from my family and friends, while it shifts my focus to commits instead of conversations, while it is devastatingly lonely at times to feel as I feel and work as I work towards unachievable goals… we are building something. Because while I used to be just I or the royal we… there is we now. And soon, we will be that much stronger; together.